In the next few years Sabzian will be hosting a series of film programs at KASKcinema: Seuls. Singular Moments in Belgian Film History. These programs will be accompanied by the publication of unique texts by Belgian filmmakers and writers on Sabzian’s website. It is often said that cinephiles don’t know or are rarely appreciative of their own national cinema. Film critic Adrian Martin “observe[s] a very intriguing dimension of cinephile thought: namely, the usually feisty way it negotiates a fraught relation with the cinephile’s own national cinema. Indeed, I sometimes think I can spot a cinephile by the intensity of their hatred for their national cinema.” With this series of film evenings, Sabzian aims to chart the wayward landscape of Belgian cinema with images, sounds and words, by means of an affectionate countermovement.

“Ephemeral, fleeting beauty on which the condensation of cinema imposes the living rhythm of dance. A retreating wave may leave ridges on the sand, but the wind will come and draw new geometrical forms. Storck records these forms as a moment of extreme tension, just when the wind forces a new shape to take the place of the old.”

“Without a doubt this can be called experimental. But it must also be said, that contrary to many others (pure rhythms, diagonal symphonies and mechanical ballets), in this film of Storck’s, the tendency towards abstraction does not undermine the material, dense, sensual dimension of the elements but rather exalts it by getting down to an organic, elementary, vital level. The tourist’s Ostend remains out of frame (it is winter); the wind chases away the few holidaymakers, just as the lens does all trace of humanity. All that is left is the sea.”

“Dimanche was supposed to be a didactic film, intended to evoke the problem of leisure. Bernhard diverts the order and outwits the trap of the ‘thematic’ film. Without resorting to any form of commentary, making use of extraordinary images sublimating common spaces (the boredom of Sundays, the changing of the guard, children playing, a runner in the woods, a football match, …), he constructs with a nifty montage an exceptional work dealing with the sense of void and the fossilisation of the world.”

“Although Dekeukeleire’s fourth film is often called Flamme blanche, its actual title is in Flemish, Witte vlam. (Dekeukeleire was of Flemish ancestry, but this is the only ‘Flemish’ film of the four experimentals.) The filmmaker called this work ‘a look backward,’ since it lacks the radical experimentation of Impatience and Histoire de détective. Here instead a considerable influence from Vertov and Eisenstein is apparent, with ‘Russian’ framings and cutting dominating the non-documentary portions. The narrative concerns a peaceful demonstration by the Flemish People’s Party at Dixmude, an actual event which Dekeukeleire filmed. To this he adds a specific story line about one of the demonstrators, a butcher who is injured when police ride through the crowd. He flees to his home and is subsequently arrested while hiding in the barn. The ‘white flame’ of the title refers figuratively to the immense white banner which moves in the wind in the demonstration scene and final shot. Dekeukeleire described the title as the ‘poetic equivalent of pure revolt’.”

“The problematic relation between a woman’s daily routine and her creative everyday is dramatically highlighted through the flight into a secluded room – in which the stakes of her art will be proven. It is in this room apart that Akerman performs rituals of order and disorder, as if carrying out a continuous aesthetic experiment. This room is especially charged with an obsessive quality that points to a central problematic in her films: the autonomous person.”

“In the second of her 1972 experiments, Akerman again wanted to draw viewers’ eyes to elements in the frame that they might not otherwise have considered. Similarly focused on architecture and interior spaces, Hotel Mônterey is grander in scope than La chambre.